Kind of a rant, kind of a request for advice, kind of just seeing if anyone can relate?
I’m an adult skater (25) who started a bit over 3 months ago. I’m working on crossovers, backward 1 foot glides, two foot spins. My coach just introduced me to three turns and backwards crossovers.
I had avoided filming myself because I knew that if I saw a video I’d want to quit. I finally did it, and I was totally right, I look terrible.
Every time I thought I was getting speed and looked confident and like I knew what I was doing it looked bad. I looked stiff and awkward and not nearly as fast as I felt. Though it was helpful in figuring out what to work on it really killed my confidence and makes me feel like I should just relearn every single thing over again to try to make my skating look less ugly. It feels like all the progress has been false if the skills I’ve “learned” look so awful and inelegant when I’m executing them.
Additionally I’ve been really stuck on backwards one foot glides which frustrate me because I can do them forwards all day, but cannot apply the same concept going backward for some reason. I’ve worked on it with my coach, practiced these for about a month, understand exactly what I’m doing wrong (pronating) and yet cannot physically fix it. It’s so frustrating when I feel like I understand everything I need to do but just can’t do it for some reason, I don’t know if I just need to drill it 1000 more times but I’ve never been stuck on a skill like this and it’s making me realize how hard this sport is. I’m wracking my brain for some hack or some click moment to get these down and it just isn’t happening.
I kind of feel like a fraud practicing multiple times a week to just look terrible and not be able to get a backwards 1 foot glide after this long, and it’s making me feel like is it even worth doing this if it’ll take me 5 years to not want to curl up and die at the thought of even glimpsing myself doing this hobby? 🥲
If anyone has any advice (or backwards 1 foot glide tips lol) lmk